OCULARPATION: WALL STREET

August 1st, 2011
Monday morning at 7am
50 people working the professions of Wall Street
ALL OF WALL STREET EXPOSED

More photos and video will be up shortly.

Photo by Mike Kingsbaker

The most famous street in America, Wall Street is the grand chameleon. To some it is a visionary
and shimmering boulevard where fortune is won and the American dream is played out in real life,
where a person can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and join the titans of history in ruling
the economy of their country. To others Wall street is the gleaming ruby in capitalisms crown,
showing that consumerism and democracy work hand in hand to provide the finest system of governance
known to humanity. To still others Wall Street is the epitome of what has gone wrong with the United States,
unchecked greed run rampant over the nation that birthed it. At the very least Wall Street is the most
controversial and widely debated street in the US, but how much is actually known about this thin strip
of cobblestone that stretches but a few blocks?

Video still by Steven Day

Ocularpation: Wall Street was a five minute, outdoor performance that stretched the entire length
of Wall Street. Each of the fifty performers was enacting an actual occupation from Wall Street.

The idea came to me while talking to my mother. She was a public school counselor for thirty years
and was forced to come out of retirement to look for a job in her mid-sixties because she lost
almost all of her retirement savings in the crash of 2008. At first she was depressed and then
she became furious that the entire financial structure of Wall Street is almost totally opaque
and inaccessible to many of the people it affects the most.

Photo by Daniela Pimentel

Ocularpation: Wall Street was an project which aimed to create a sense of transparency for one
of the most mysterious streets in history. The project was two parts. First I canvassed the entire
street of Wall and took a survey of what professions people actually worked on Wall Street. Next I
assigned the fifty performers proportional roles based on this data. To further this aim, in the
spirit of a Freudian nightmare and to draw attention to the absurdity of the modern economic model,
I had all of the performers appear naked, Wall Street exposed!

Thank you to everyone who made this project possible.
A special thank you to Drea Bernardi. You are THE best.